Voltage, Stream, and Chaos?

[Tank101]

I looked on ddrfreak.com, but they didn't really explain it well, what do they really represent?

[arne]

voltage:ammount of notes/time
chaos: ammount of odd notes like.. non- 4th and 8th
stream: steady flow without breaks.. or something

[Dronak]

Well, let me see. I looked them up, I think from DDR Freak, not long ago because I was wondering what they meant, too. Here are the notes I made:

Chaos = irregularity of steps
Stream = overall density of steps
Voltage = peak density of steps
Air = jumps
Freeze = number of hold steps
(last two for completeness; those are the five that DWI at least shows)

Chaos is probably a measure of both the irregularity of the notes themselves and the pattern of arrows. Quarter or eighth notes are expected, but triplets aren't, right? Something with more triplets would probably get a higher chaos rating. But I bet the arrow pattern is part of it to. A run of straight quarters, eighths, etc. shouldn't be too hard (maybe with some practice), but if they syncopate things, 1/4, pause, 1/8, 1/8, 1/4, 1/4, 1/4, long pause, 1/8, 1/8, 1/4, 1/8, whatever, that should be a higher chaos rating, too. It's not a nice, even, regular pattern.

Stream, overall density of steps, should basically be the total number of arrows divided by the duration of the song. More arrows per second, higher stream. The way I read it, it's essentially how fast the arrows are coming at you on average.

Voltage, the peak density of steps, should be like the stream, an arrow/time measure, but at the highest point. This should be the most arrows you're going to get per second. Most of the song may be 1/4 or 1/8 notes with some pauses, but the fastest part might be a run of 1/16 notes. That 1/16 note run would be used to calculate the voltage since it's the part that gives you the most arrows the fastest. This should essentially be the highest stream value if you calculated it for small segments of the song instead of the song as a whole.

Does that help? I'm new to this stuff so I could be mistaken, but that's how I read these definitions.

[arne]

Chaos is probably a measure of both the irregularity of the notes themselves and the pattern of arrows. Quarter or eighth notes are expected, but triplets aren't, right? Something with more triplets would probably get a higher chaos rating. But I bet the arrow pattern is part of it to. A run of straight quarters, eighths, etc. shouldn't be too hard (maybe with some practice), but if they syncopate things, 1/4, pause, 1/8, 1/8, 1/4, 1/4, 1/4, long pause, 1/8, 1/8, 1/4, 1/8, whatever, that should be a higher chaos rating, too. It's not a nice, even, regular pattern.

It should, but I'm not so sure the game cares about real chaos...
Example: the challenge steps for udderdudes max150 steps aren't much more "chaotic" than max300, still it has a "full" chaos rating.. and I'm pretty sure it's because its filled with 16th's



*edit*


//checked stepmania source

for( int r=0; r<=rows; r++ )
{
if( !in.IsRowEmpty(r) && GetNoteType(r) >= NOTE_TYPE_12TH )
iNumChaosNotes++;
}


so.. 12th's and bigger (well, smaller actually) add to chaos.

[Dronak]

Huh. That's weird. All it takes to get a high chaos rating then is a bunch of short duration notes, fast arrows. Even if they're in a perfectly straight, dead even rhythm. That doesn't make much sense, but if that's how they define it, that's it. I think it would be better to give it a different name then though because "chaos" seems better suited to how regular or irregular the rhythms are.

[Moogy]

Voltage is the number of steps in a song proportional to how long the song is (Anybody have the exact algorhythm?).

Stream is... streams.

Chaos is the amount of notes that are not 4ths/8ths. I believe DWI counts 8ths as Chaos as well though.

[arne]

dronak was right about voltage and stream..
voltage: highest density of notes in one beat

the algorithm simply goes thru all beats and counts the number of notes in them

	for&#40; int i=0; i<=int&#40;fLastBeat&#41;; i+=BEAT_WINDOW &#41;
	&#123;
		int iNumNotesThisWindow = in.GetNumTapNotes&#40;&#40;float&#41;i,&#40;float&#41;i+BEAT_WINDOW&#41; + in.GetNumHoldNotes&#40;&#40;float&#41;i,&#40;float&#41;i+BEAT_WINDOW&#41;;
		float fDensityThisWindow = iNumNotesThisWindow/&#40;float&#41;BEAT_WINDOW;
		fMaxDensitySoFar = max&#40; fMaxDensitySoFar, fDensityThisWindow &#41;;
	&#125;